John Edwards, the “Truther” is out there (re-edited)
Lance on May 10 2007 at 5:43 pm | Filed under: Domestic Politics, History, Lance's Page, Media
Edit note: In writing this I seem to have lost some edits, which when I recreated the post I left off. First, I neglected to re-link to the Cheerful Iconoclasts nice post on Edwards and also left off some tempering language and a whole key paragraph was left off. I have put some of that language back in as I now have a chance to re-read and find the places where material was lost. I think one paragraph (and it was obvious that there was a problem with it as words were just missing, I’ll need to talk to Chrisb about him not informing me) which I recreate the gist of, changes the tone and thrust of the piece significantly. The attempted edits are in italics.
Update: Loose Change in the theaters? Truthers launching a campaign against Tim Blair?
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As pointed out in my previous post, of the major candidates, the one who sets my teeth to grinding the most often is John Edwards. While ridiculous falsehoods such as claiming to join a hedge fund to learn about poverty may have Clintonesque precedent, and apocryphal stories about young girls unable to afford coats is in a long tradition of political demagoguery (most charmingly, if you aren’t a leftist, by Ronald Reagan) some beliefs pandered to are so destructive that they are a threat to any reasonable political dialogue or culture.
I pointed out earlier that vicious, conspiratorial fantasies (the kind which are so deeply embedded throughout the Middle East and ran rampant in Europe between WWI and WWII) had escaped the fever swamps of the anti-Clinton right and the anti-Bush left into the mainstream of the Democratic party.
Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure.
To put that another way, only 39% of Democrats believe the President wasn’t aware of the attacks beforehand. The rest either believe he knew or are not sure! 61%!
Throw in the usual number of right wing cranks and assorted conspiracy theorists and a full 44% of likely voters either believe he knew or think he might have known. What the unlikely voters believe is most likely even more disturbing.
John Edwards obviously feels he can’t afford to ignore this demographic. So when asked if he was going to investigate what happened in the WTC 7 collapse on 9/11, what did he say? Did he decide it was time for a Sister Souljah moment? Make a stand to reverse the slide toward irrationalism within and without his party? No.
His pandering, his knowledge of how widespread this kind of thinking actually is (despite the protests of some that it is just a few extremists) and the importance of that demographic, seems to have driven him to say he’ll “look into it.”
I should point out that Republicans and conservatives share in the blame. Resentment over the various Clinton conspiracies in the nineties led many on the left to indulge, if not endorse, such things more easily than they used to.
The problem with this is it has now broken out into the mainstream. We don’t just have Lyndon Larouche as comic relief, his animating spirit is infecting even a major candidate and party, is even threatening dominance within its ranks. It is bound to cause a similar reaction on the right, Republicans and conservatives are as prone as anyone to find such a slide easy.
Of course, maybe John Edwards just didn’t understand the question he was being asked, and thus my particular focus on him must be tempered. I think that would imply he has been living under a rock (a very large, multi-million dollar rock) but politicians often do. I find that particularly dubious due to his wifes prevalence in the blog world. However, as regular readers know, I believe in being as charitable towards peoples words as possible, if they disclaim it. Thus when the Cheerful Icononclast suggests:
Now, if Edwards comes back and says “fire doesn’t melt steel,” or gives credence to the notion that Bush knew — well, hammer away at him. But I think that the criticism being launched at Edwards at this time is overblown given the apparent confusion in this exchange.
I am sympathetic. That isn’t good enough for me though. He needs to say he disavows it. It doesn’t matter to me that he might be just regretting his pandering. That would be good enough for me. This kind of thing should not be played as a game of political gotcha and make it harder for him to backtrack by insisting he believes something he doesn’t. He needs to clearly say that he rejects such unfounded charges and give a wakeup call to those who hold such views, and we should allow him to do so, because whether he meant to or not, I don’t believe Edwards believes in this stuff or thinks it is a positive.
The crowd however wasn’t applauding some unknown charge, they knew exactly what Edwards (however inadvertently) was agreeing to do and were excited at the possibility. If Edwards was unaware, then that excitement should disturb him. I want to hear that he was disturbed.
I don’t mean to sound apocalyptic, I don’t think John Edwards or some far scarier politician is going to lead us down the path to mass based fascism. The reason though, is because I believe we will reject these types of irrational movements. That this slide will be resisted by the intellectual elites of the Democratic party, and the left more broadly, eventually. I believe our civil institutions are strong enough to resist that strain. But this is dangerous stuff.
This is what comes from the indulgence of claims that George Bush is some unique threat, a man literally bringing fascism to our country. Building up a man, who despite my many disagreements with him has done nothing on the civil liberties front half as scary as either Franklin Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson, as a budding Mussolini, is the root of this. In the reaction to my and Lee Garnett’s interview with Manny Lopez a fellow columnist at the Detroit Daily news actually claimed there was no difference between what is happening in America and Venezuela:
And I still suggest you read Manny’s interview and just as a thought exercise, substitute the word Bush for Chavez and see if it doesn’t read like a history of the last six years of the Bush administration.
(The Impolitic)
Read Glenn Greenwald, the Daily Kos, Think Progress and this kind of rhetoric is both prevalent and indulged by those who don’t make the arguments themselves.
This is not a Democratic problem; the numbers show there is some support within the rest of the population as well, though luckily in relative terms it is a small number; it is an American problem. Extreme rhetoric, even when as usual it has some truth to it, has a cost. If Bush is so evil, then why would we blanch at accepting conspiracy theories? Neo-conservative cabals who have taken over the entire right side of the ideological spectrum, wars for oil, indulging and wildly applauding (actually having mainstream politicians urging voters to see and endorse) the fantasies of Michael Moore, they all feed the conspiratorial mindset, just as they did when discussing Clinton in the nineties. The most extreme beliefs luckily didn’t reach the prominence these have then (even Rush Limbaugh was decrying the black helicopter crowd at the end) but who is to say the reaction on the right will not be even worse going forward?
It is this irrational polarization which has torn apart democratic governments in the past. Once in power, how is the Democratic party to react? How will Republicans respond? A blogger I respect actually worried last fall that Bush might defy the Supreme Court and call on the military to resist any orders to close Guantanamo. Many on the left and other paranoid figures are so filled with real fear along these lines they actually read Thomas Sowell as calling for a coup? (I am not suggesting they are lying, they really believe that is what he was calling for.) If Bush and the neo-cons and their fellow travelers are so real a threat, doesn’t that require actions to squash it? How do you tell people who believe we have been led by mass murderers, or complicit with them, that merely winning an election is enough? Once attacked in such terms might many on the right view the battle in the same type of terms? Are we not risking this building in tit for tat fashion to something really ugly?
Our democracy isn’t under real threat, because I don’t believe we will let it be. There is no time like the present to reject this plague however, because the longer politicians play with this fire the harder it is to put out. It is just as important that Republicans, conservatives and libertarians behave carefully in how we react, or others react. Ratcheting up the rhetoric to match the kind of claims that are now common currency on the left (including those libertarians such as Greenwald who have submerged themselves in leftist fever swamps) will not make them go away, they just make them worse.
This is the error that hacks like Oliver Willis and Media Matters have made. Oliver has many times stated that this is political war, the right did it, and it would be unwise to not respond in kind. Well, this is what happens when that kind of thinking is indulged, your party becomes overrun with people who have lost all perspective. Reasonable, normal people descending into political and intellectual lunacy. As Lee at Post Political observed, it is often difficult to understand how normal people are attracted to irrational belief systems, but the history of the last 100 years shows normal people, people you would call friends and seem not to be extreme, can and do accept such systems of belief:
As a schoolboy, I remember that I was often mystified by photographs from 1933, depicting the Nazi election marches, militarized street gangs and obscene public spectacles for Gotterdammerung and hate. It was perplexing to look at their own campaign literature and messages, which were so dark and ugly, one would think they had to be some exaggerated satire written by the opposition. Their own stated goals of total social unification into an army of identical robots beneath an omnipotent state, were completely unappealing to the free imagination.
It was impossible for me as a boy, to understand how anyone could have found this attractive, could have voted for this nonsense. It was all so patently wicked and stupid on the face of it, how could a Christian people embrace it, lift it up and put it into power over them? Yet here as a man, we can see how easy it remains for some people. I’m afraid that all these years later, I remain as a boy, bereft of an explanation for the appeal of it.
One of the first signs of such a march of shopkeepers, housewives, farmers and people who we would never expect to become seduced by mass irrationality is the prevalence of paranoid, vicious, conspiracy theories among the broader population. If my optimism about America is to be warranted I suggest we all start doing something about it now. John Edwards demonstrates he doesn’t seem to have the courage to do so. Hopefully Clinton, Richardson and Obama do.
Others blogging:
Technorati Tags: John Edwards, Bill Clinton, 9/11, Conspiracy theorists, Democrats, Republicans
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The Mask of Statism and the Legitimacy of Criticism…
I was reading through a customarily trenchant analysis by Lance at ASHC today. About midway in to it, he alludes to the dispute we had with Libby Spencer some weeks ago, regarding her sympathy for the cruel dictatorship in Venezuela. I realized that I…
Controlled demolition? Pfft those were last weeks “facts”
The new “facts” are that it was MAGICK!!!
Many on the left and other paranoid figures are so filled with real fear along these lines they actually read Thomas Sowell as calling for a coup?
How is there any possible way to read his statement other than as calling for a military coup? “Sometimes I think the only thing that could save this country is a military coup”? How on earth is that not calling for it? Are you suggesting he was being satirical? Ha!
Use the following test:
Michael Moore, hypothetically: “Sometimes I think the only thing that could save this country is for the citizens to pour into the streets, invade the White House no matter the cost, and perform regime change on George Bush.”
In this hypothetical example, is M. Moore calling for violent overthrow of the government?
Please make an attempt at a consistent standard. Some leftist hysteria, such as conspiracy-mongering on 9/11, is not justified. And some of it, is. There are too many people who aren’t leftists and have never been leftists, but are indeed legal experts, who feel that GWB has made revolutionary and dangerous changes to the U.S. legal system. You lump them in with DailyKos for your own mental convenience, but you do so at your own peril.
This rhetoric you worry about – is the driver of putting people in office who might eventually do… things a lot like what GW is doing right now.
sorry for the slip, was too long to read at work.
We will have to cut your pay. We amoral capitalists are like that.
Heh, well he has you laughing, so I should rest my case. However, that wasn’t what he said:
Sowell was being hyperbolic in my opinion, but it doesn’t matter. He is literally saying that due to the degeneracy he sees he fears that it may someday get to that point. I don’t agree, but the key parts of the quote are that he “can’t help wondering,” as in speculating, and “the day may yet come,” as in he sees worrisome trends. He is admitting that it is pessimistic speculation, and that it is in the future either way. So, that I think he is being hyperbolic doesn’t matter because literally he is not calling for a coup. How is that statement characterized:
Uh, no. The only way to read it that way is to convince yourself ahead of time that is what he really wants, and then to read between the lines to find what you want. Do you want to bet he’ll agree with my interpretation or the one above? Glad to make it if you wish. Mine at least has the virtue of being based on a literal reading. The one above is conspiracy fantasy fulfillment.
No, though he is talking about today, Sowell was talking about the future, as in, if things get even worse. I don’t like either statement, but they are what they are.
Peril?
More importantly, where do I do that? I agree Bush has made dangerous changes to the legal system. What I don’t do is pretend that that is fascism or outside of the norm. Clinton, Johnston, Roosevelt and Wilson did so as well, in fact far more in the case of the last three. Do I act as if they are actually fascists or communists? If the people you mention are in the vein of me then the criticism is not directed at them. If they want to act as if the country is on the road to dictatorship with Bush or his neo-con successor in power, or that our government (sans legitimate evidence) engaged in the mass murder of its own citizens on 9/11, it is.
You want to complain about Habeas Corpus, abusive detainee policies, excess surveillance, I am not talking about you. I may agree or disagree with certain aspects, but that is all legitimate. If you want to act as if this is something unique and evil, as if Bush is a totalitarian trying to end democracy in America or willingly allowed the death of thousands on 9/11, I am.
Lance, the man wrote that the day may come when the “only thing” that will “save” us from his overwrought parade of horribles is a military coup. That’s what he wrote. Quite clearly he is endorsing that as an option to put on the table in response to the jeremiad he has set forth. (And if he were to deny it now that so many have castigated him for such extremism, if he were to say he was just joking, waxing hyperbolic etc., I wouldn’t believe him. That column was absurd on many levels, including much of what he thinks is “destroying” this republic. If he really thinks things are that awful, I guess a military coup makes sense)
In any event, as glasnost suggests, any parallel statement made by a prominent left-wing columnist about what the right supposedly destroying us, would cause a hue and cry, and you know it. Greenwald has never remotely called for such a thing, and has even deleted comments that make such intimations about taking to the streets in violence — you would never let him off the hook if he wrote a graf advocating a coup in the context of a sober, bombast-filled post about how evil the right is.
And just as a point of information, Greenwald does not buy into 9/11 conspiracy theories, that Bush knew, and he does not even believe Bush is evil. He thinks Bush is a dangerous True Believer who sincerely does not see where and how his dualistic moral vision necessarily leads to immoral results.
I know you won’t buy it when it comes out, but that’s essentially the thesis of his latest book, due out by Random House-Crown in June.
Yeah, if things in his mind went down that horrible road. Neither you nor I have to agree with his belief that the things he says are leading us down the road to chaos will, but then if they don’t no need for a coup.
Which they do all the time, and this post even provides examples of it. I have no problem with criticizing Sowell for thinking all the things he thinks are a threat are so terrible. I don’t agree with a bunch of it. That is far different from claiming he endorses a coup. He didn’t do that. If I asked him if he endorses the military seizing power, he would say no. You and I both know that.
Of course you wouldn’t believe him. You have this idea that your targets are embarrassed by what they write and that is why they deny it. That is silly. He meant something, something he is willing to stand behind, however stupid I might think some of it is, that is why he wrote it. If the literal reading isn’t good enough for you, his word should suffice. I apply that rule across the board, including with Edwards above.
No he doesn’t. I don’t think anyone ever has accused him of such a thing, at least not at sites I frequent. He is part of the problem however, and he is a conspiracy theorist, with his mass smearing of people and attribution of ideas and motives that are truly ghastly, in fact just as ghastly as being behind 9/11. They just don’t have the convenient fault of being able to be disproven by simple physics. Greenwald is too smart for that kind of thing, or I hope he is. And acting as if Sowell believes this country is anywhere close to the need for military rule is a small sample of just that.
By the way, you said you weren’t going to visit. That is fine, and I respected it by staying away from your stuff. Even when you made the ridiculous claim that I “revere” Michael Ledeen. Our politics are way too far apart for that. But it is par for the course in your belief you can ascribe whatever you want to believe to whoever you wish to. But I just ignored it and the way you attached me by association to the rather vicious comments of you and Greenwald about Ledeen.
You see, that is what happens when you do a drive by like that. If you call somebody what amounts to a psychopath who wants nothing more than to kill more Muslims and various other smears, and then attach me to him to the point of reverence, you are claiming I revere a mass murderer, or at minimum a would be mass murderer. I worship, according to you, someone who desires “oceans of blood.”
Now, whether he does or does not desire such things is immaterial to the fact that you have now smeared me, and in a way that is particularly disgusting. Whether that was your intention or not, it is irresponsible, because your readers can know no different. They only believe that Ledeen is a psychopath who wants nothing but war and blood according to you, and that I revere him. So whatever subtle distinction you might make in not intending to attach the smears to me (and for all I know that was your intention) the deed is done. So personally, that steps so far over the line that I would appreciate you just staying away. As far as I am concerned you can say whatever you want about me at High Clearing, I promise to let you get away with it. Keep your bile away from this site however.
You have really alienated an impressive number of people Mona, including people who at one time tried to make you a friend and work with you. I would say it is sad, but I guess that is alright with you, because it has attracted a nice little audience amongst people who are as filled with bile and moral and intellectual vanity as you are.
No need to respond Mona, I think we both know where we stand.
What? No amazon link? You’re going to have to have the other Glenn teach you about advertising.